Matha Pitha Guru Failures

Matha Pitha Guru Failures

Friends, lets began with a question: How many sides does a coin have? We will find the answer in the course of this discussion. We all wish for a perfect life from childhood till our end life. And… that never happens. When we try to figure out reasons, we observe that our life had its fair share of many small mistakes and few big failures. This blog discusses the pain and gain from failures. 

My experiment with bleaching powder

When I was in my 10th grade, we had practical exams for science papers and that required preparing a record note which captured exercises from the practicals. This incident happened before the submission for Zoology exam. When I was doing my last practical, I made multiple mistakes while writing in the record note. My friend came up with a brilliant idea of rubbing bleaching powder on the part to be revised, and next morning I can write on top of it as by then it would have whitened. I took the advice. The morning was a shocker – the bleaching powder not only whitened the required section in the page, but it also whitened half the pages in the record note. After the shock subsided, I came up with a plan. I lied to my Zoology teacher that I lost the record note and will rewrite it before the practical exam. I lied because I didn’t want to be laughed at for the ‘fair & lovely’ record note! After the usual lecture, she agreed. At this point only I realised that I had to write/draw an entire academic year’s effort in one week. The drawing part was the most difficult because I was extraordinarily poor in drawing, maybe except for amoeba! As I was the only student yet to submit record notes before the final practicals, it became a talking point in my class. The positive from this was I got support for drawing – from my Physics teacher! As he was quite approachable, I confided with him the bleaching powder saga. My teacher handed me an important lesson. He said, “Anytime you make a mistake, just strike it out and move on. Trying to erase your mistake will make more people know about your mess and the stigma can be for life”. After this incident my writing skill and speed improved significantly as I became less bothered about making mistakes. That was an early experience I can recall. At that point, little did I realise it was one of my smallest mistakes and there were many more to come!

“I am not lucky ☹”

Do you know anyone – past or present – who has been either lucky throughout or unlucky throughout in their entire lives? I don’t. We often blame luck or the lack of it for the failures we encounter in our life. To explore its relevance in our life, let’s play a simple game of tossing a coin. The outcome – winning or losing – after one toss is pure luck. However, if we play this 100 times, the probability of either winning or losing is almost equal i.e., approx. 50%. Since most of us are blessed enough to live a full life span, the role of luck becomes insignificant with respect to long term success. This understanding is key to make peace with ourselves about luck. 

Developing a relationship

Like my record note fiasco, you might have similar experiences. But that should not stop us from doing things. We can develop a healthy relationship with failure. Not just a healthy relationship but to learn to accept it. When we plan to do something, we take zero steps forward because that's all we are doing – just planning. We need to act, even when we have no idea where the next step is. The worst thing that can happen is we fail and with every failure we gain experience. Pain leads to change and change leads to improvement. Experience teaches us faster than reading books or watching videos and ultimately gets us closer to where we want to be. The more we fail and don’t give up, the more doors open up for us. The greatest inventions we enjoy today were experiments years ago, with an uncertain outcome. If the outcome was certain, they would not be experiments! Building failures into our lives help us evolve as better individuals and is crucial for our overall development.

Can we avoid failures?

To avoid failures, we need to meticulously calculate and plan every step of our way. The problem here is we will be very slow and not opening enough to experiences because we are trying to avoid failure. The fear of failure stems from the fear of what other people think about us, but the secret is that nobody is thinking about us. Seriously, nobody. Everyone is living a life as complex as ours. A life where they are the main character and we might just be there for a brief moment at an intersection. So, avoid the illusion of perfection because even if we reach it, nobody would notice.

Taking action, failing, unlearning and relearning is more optimal use of our energy.  Planning but not executing slowly drains energy. 

"If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential." – Ray Dalio (Investor / Author)

A message from the movies 

Movies provide a good analogy to our lives. Almost all movies follow a familiar script - lead characters go through trials and struggles but towards the climax, they figure out the solutions towards a happy life, in cinematic style. A movie portrays multiple angles – emotions, fun, action, heroism, satire, messages; but invariably ends with a positive or a satisfying conclusion. Why are movies generally satisfying? The answer is not in the movies; it is with us! We may like or dislike the movie, but we accept the conclusion the way it is. Likewise, the death of our near and dear ones gives us a conclusion because we accept it as it is. The message here is simple but powerful – Acceptance.

Failures, like death, are inevitable.

Living a Perfect Good life 

Coming back to the coin, a coin has 3 sides - head, tail and the edge. The edge is generally not considered a side, but it plays its role in completing the coin. Life is never fair, and we should not expect it to be. We have a choice though – we can accept, adapt and overcome the way it is. Just like the unnoticed edge of the coin, failures are the invisible ‘friend, philosopher, guide’ in our life. While school teaches us that failure is the opposite of success, life teaches us that failure is an integral part of success. If we try to be perfect, we are bound to have a hard life. Making mistakes is a part of life. Learning from them is a choice. And when we start learning, we start creating our own luck! 

~ Anil Sagayanathan